President Joyce Banda has made an impassioned plea on opposition leaders to respond to the call of their patriotic responsibilities, join her, and, together, work “to realize the core aspiration of our people to attain a better life for all.”

“I speak here today in the presence of the people, who represent the most of our afflicted, and they are communicating an unequivocal message from the rural masses that form the bedrock of our population,” President Banda said at Zokoto Primary School Ground in Senior Chief Khongoni, Kasiya in Lilongwe on Thursday after she toured Mtoso Village, one of the first ‘model’ villages that have been earmarked to benefit under the Mudzi Transformation Trust.

The tour came seven days after the President announced in Parliament that her administration had established the Mudzi Transformation Trust as a vehicle for rapid rural development. The concept will target individual villages for real transformation of the lives of the people.

President Banda: Calls for unity of purpose

“The people demand of all of us who claim to be their leaders, that we tell them whether we remain committed to the undertaking we have made that tomorrow will be better than today,” said President Joyce Banda.
“What the people are expecting is not heaven or the moon. What they are expecting is the truth. The truth that as leaders we will not let them down, but will join hands across the aisle of our political differences to stop the motion of their lives from hurtling into the abyss of despondency,” President Banda spoke to a touched crowd.

“In this crowd are the old and the young who represent both memory and hope, and they remind us by their presence that ours is a task in a relay race of continuous rebirth so that the dream of a better life becomes a reality for all Malawians.”

President Banda said: “Indeed, these people, they represent a celebration of the indomitable spirit of our people, and pose a challenge to all of us to act in ways that do not betray or disappoint the expectations of our population.”

She continued: “Hon. Peter Mutharika, Hon. John Tembo, Hon. Atupele Muluzi and all other leaders, I have got news for you. More than at any other time, the situation that confronts our nation and country, and the tasks we have set ourselves, demand that we inspire and organize all our people to act together as one, to do all the things that have to be done, understanding that in a very real sense, all of us, together, hold our own future in our hands!”

Relating her disappointment with a politician she did not name, who phoned her to commend the State of the Nation Address immediately after it was delivered, but castigated it in his comments on the radio, President Banda said double-faced politics was unacceptable and completely incompatible with kind of attitude that the challenges the country faces expects from its political leaders.

“This kind of politics is ancient, obsolete and unhelpful. It is this kind of conduct that has always derailed development,” she said.

“Politicians of this type must be condemned for their doublefaced, which make them to be double-edge knives,” she added.

President Banda said she remains resolute to challenge the poisonous line of opportunism from which selfish politicians feed, and make sure that the livelihoods of the people do not continue to be slaughtered in the abattoirs of dirty politics.

On a tour of Group Mtoso Village, President Banda was taken inside a grass-thatched mud hut belonging to an old couple and in a state of near-collapse. The Head of State promised the couple Government would build them a better house.

Other speakers at the rally were Vice President Khumbo Kachali and National Director of Elections for the governing PP, Zelesi Gomani, among others.